Holker Hall and Gardens

Holker Hall, never sold throughout its 400 year history, is the family home of Lord and Lady Cavendish. It is a delightful family home with fine displays of antique furniture and art, and both the Hall and the gardens are open to the public.

Holker Hall is the finest house in South Lakeland. The architectural interest of the house is almost all Victorian, a replacement after a fire in 1871. It is the work of Paley and Austin, and is their oustanding domestic work, using red sandstone in the Elizabethan style.

You can tour the house without the restriction of ropes and barriers, and see the distinguished library, elegant drawing room, and ornate dining room. Climb the striking staircase and you can view portraits of Charles II, and Catherine of Braganza. You can visit the bedroom where Queen Mary stayed in 1937.

The gardens are winners of Christies/HHA Garden of the Year in 1991, and voted ‘amongst the best in the world’ by the Good Gardens Guide, 1996. The pleasure grounds cover 25 acres of formal and woodland gardens, with majestic water features including the limestone cascade.

There is a lime tree here, some 72 feet high and with a diameter of 92 inches, with a huge squat trunk, celebrated by The Tree Council in June 2002 as one of fifty ‘Great British Trees’.

Holker Hall gardens were of great interest to Thomas Mawson, the landscape gardener of international repute, based in Windermere, because they contained many rare conifers, rhododendrons and other peat-loving plants. In 1910 Mawson set low terraces, a rose garden and a ballustraded boundary wall to contrast with the landscape manner of the rolling parkland.

There is a Gift Shop, Food Hall, Courtyard Café and Ilex Brasserie, a small children’s playground and picnic tables. A calendar of events runs through the year, full details of these can be found on the Holker Hall website.

Holker Hall is one of the gardens in Cumbria with free entry for RHS Members at specific times of the year.